Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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172. To ask the Minister for Health the status of an appointment for surgery for a person (details supplied). [9001/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Under the Health Act 2004, the Health Service Executive (HSE) is required to manage and deliver, or arrange to be delivered on its behalf, health and personal social services. Section 6 of the HSE Governance Act 2013 bars the Minister for Health from directing the HSE to provide a treatment or a personal service to any individual or to confer eligibility on any individual.

The National Waiting List Management Policy, A standardised approach to managing scheduled care treatment for in-patient, day case and planned procedures, January 2014,has been developed to ensure that all administrative, managerial and clinical staff follow an agreed national minimum standard for the management and administration of waiting lists for scheduled care. This policy, which has been adopted by the HSE, sets out the processes that hospitals are to implement to manage waiting lists.

In relation to the particular query raised, as this is a service matter, I have asked the HSE to respond to you directly. If you have not received a reply from the HSE within 15 working days please contact my Private Office and my officials will follow the matter up.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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173. To ask the Minister for Health if he is satisfied with the bed management systems that are allowing for the cancellation of surgeries to help alleviate the trolley crisis in emergency departments, despite the fact that these beds on surgical wards cannot be used by trolley patients due to the danger posed from infection to post-operative patients on these surgical wards, thereby adding to surgical waiting lists and maintaining the trolley crisis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9004/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Emergency Department Taskforce Implementation Group has been overseeing initiatives to address ED performance and overcrowding. These initiatives include optimising discharges in advance of the weekends, strengthening the senior decision making presence at wards and in EDs, increased access to diagnostics and securing staff to open overflow areas.

During 2015, additional funding of €117 million was provided to the HSE to relieve ED overcrowding pressures. This funding has supported initiatives to expand hospital capacity with 364 additional beds opened or reopened, reduce the number of hospital attendances by expanding community intervention team services and increasing the availability of community hospitals, and support timely patient discharge from hospital by reducing the wait time for Fair Deal funding to no more than 4 weeks, providing additional transitional care places, public community beds and home care packages.

Since the beginning of 2016, the HSE has reported an increase of 6.9% in patient attendances in comparison with the same period last year. However, the total year to date number of patients waiting on trolleys at 8am each morning has shown a marginal increase of 1%.

This year, the HSE is focusing on a number of key activities to manage waiting lists more effectively, thereby improving patient waiting times. These include; ensuring that chronological scheduling is adhered to, putting in place validation procedures to ensure that patients are available for treatment, relocating high-volume low complexity surgeries to smaller hospitals; and designating an improvement lead for each hospital group.

With respect to possible underutilisation of surgical beds, the ED escalation framework states that reviews of elective admissions should be carried out by hospital management in consultation with the relevant consultant. It is only at Stage 3 of escalation that all admissions are to be carried out through the Emergency Department and that elective surgeries are cancelled.

Stage 3 requires that elective staff are redeployed to assist with patient flow through the ED. This can impact on staffing and bed capacity in surgical wards. Taking into account the immediate and short term predictable demand/capacity scenario, decisions on hospital admissions and bed management have to be taken with regard to the safe operating limits of the hospital as a whole and in the interests of patient care.